


Jellybabies

by test_kard_girl



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/test_kard_girl/pseuds/test_kard_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tragic history of Harry Saxon and Lucy Cole. Or some of it anyway. Perhaps. Although time isn't quite as unidirectional as it used to be. And god knows whose brain this actually is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first meeting of Harry Saxon and Lucy Cole, on a rooftop in snow that was actually the ash of an obliterated spaceship, on Christmas day. All kinds of normal.

Aliens: that’s the story. Aliens invading Earth— and just in time for Christmas too.

Admittedly, it sounds like a bad joke: the most obvious prank ever pulled and, ok, it’s amazing what the BBC can do with CGI nowadays. But all Lucy knows is that one moment she was with her dad in front of the television in the living room, cradling a mug of untouched tea, mouth hanging open as a horrific misshapen face stared back at them demanding the surrender of planet earth— and the next, a bitter wind was whipping her hair around her eyes as she gazed out over whitened rooftops, standing on the very edge of the roof of the council offices. 

So ‘aliens’ almost makes _sense_.

What makes _less_ sense however, is why, eight hours later, Lucy slips out into the still, cold streets and re-traces her bemused footsteps back to the very same spot.

It's been a long time since it snowed anything like as vehemently as this. It’s so much of a coincidence that it almost feels like a kind of sign; atmospheric affirmation of the craziness, the _insanity_ , of the last two days. And of course, it drowns out the drunken revelling. That might be closer to the real reason Lucy likes it so much. Below her, underneath the blanket of white, London is peaceful and muffled and indistinguishable.

Lucy lifts her hand and watches the soft, weightless snowflakes cluster on her gloved palm.

"…It's not snow."

Lucy starts, shoes scraping furrows into the white dust at her feet as she jerks around.

There is a man standing behind her. Not too close, but near enough that Lucy is a bit unsettled she didn't hear any footsteps. He isn't looking at her though— his eyes, like hers, are preoccupied with the unusual weather, watching the snowflakes as they drift lazily downwards. If he hadn't spoken, Lucy would be tempted to think he hadn't noticed she was there at all.  

Lucy screws up her eyes, squinting through the snow and the hair now swirling violently around her face.

"Sorry um, I didn't... w-what did you say?" she stammers eventually, lips numb from the cold and the silence. She is a bit nonplussed, assuming she would be the only person daft enough to be standing on a rooftop in the middle of a snowstorm. Apparently not.

The stranger looks at her; one corner of his mouth pulls upwards into a slightly rueful smile:

"It's not snow." he repeats "Not cold enough for snow. Global warming, etcetera."

Lucy nods slightly and buries her chin deeper into her scarf, lifting her gaze to the darkening sky. 

"It... looks like snow to me." she offers politely.

The man raises an eyebrow at her and then lifts his hand, holding out his index finger.

"It's ash." he corrects, watching as one of the larger flakes floats down to land on it. "It doesn't melt; it isn't even cold. It's the ashes of the retreating spaceship your government shot out of the sky."

Almost beside Lucy now, he holds out the finger to her, snowflake (ashflake?) perched precariously on the end.

"Taste it." he suggests.

Lucy stares at him. _Don't lick snowflakes off the fingers of strange men_ isn't quite the childhood wisdom she remembers receiving, but she's sure it applies nonetheless.

"Are you mad?" she says, more genuine and less mocking than she intended.

He looks as if he's considering. "People have said so." he admits. He puts his finger in his mouth and makes a face.

"No H2O there. Carbon, silicon. Dash of phosphorus... I've tasted better."

Lucy raises her eyebrows slightly and the man smiles back, as if he understands he's freaking her out and is a little sympathetic about it. Then he pushes his hands into his pockets and the silence builds between them like the little ledges of white already filling the maze of Lucy's footprints that pattern the rooftop. 

Lucy turns away, looking back out over the deceptively quiet city, luminescent in the orange glow of streetlamps. Snowflakes drift steadily against her face and Lucy notices for the first time that they really aren't cold, just as he said.

"It _was_ a spaceship you know." The man says idly and Lucy can sense him watching her but she doesn't turn her head.

"Tomorrow they'll say it wasn't: they'll say it was a hoax...a student prank...it's always a student prank with you people, isn't it? Mass hallucination, drugs in the water system blah blah blah... and tomorrow, you'll believe it, and you'll forget."

"There was a massive spaceship hovering over London." Lucy interrupts, smile strangely crooked on her cold lips. "I'm not likely to forget. Even the government said it was aliens. The Prime Minister was abducted."

"Oh yes… good old Harriet Jones... she doesn't look quite well does she?"

Lucy feels the faint lines of worry tighten across her forehead. She's heard this too, or seen it: vague strap-lines sliding across BBC News 24; the words of reassurance that ring a little too harsh and a little too hollow this side of an alien invasion.

"Don't you have a Christmas to be getting back to?" Lucy suggests awkwardly.

The man hesitates; Lucy thinks she hears the smallest breath of ironic laughter.

"…I like the quiet." he offers eventually.

Despite herself, Lucy lifts her eyes, glancing across at him. Against the snow-bleached landscape his eyes are dark, _very_ dark, his hair caught in the whirling breeze; and he’s wearing a thin shirt that is in no way suitable for British wintertime but somehow he doesn't look cold _at all_.

"It's like the world's stopped." he continues musingly, as if oblivious to Lucy's interest. "Nothing moving. All just… frozen."

This last word seems to drift between them; a fossilised feather. Self-consciously, Lucy draws a booted toe through the white-grey dust at her feet. 

"…I thought you said it _wasn't_ cold." She reminds him wryly.

The man turns, holding her gaze for a long minute, and Lucy is glad for the biting wind that provides an excuse for the pink colour rising in her cheeks. Then he laughs, almost unsettlingly loudly.

"Don't you have a Christmas to be getting back to?" he echoes, grinning at her.

For just a moment, looking at him, Lucy is very tempted to say _no_. But that would be madness, wouldn’t it? God, she hasn’t even got her phone with her— her father will be having _kittens_.

"Yes." she replies, a little too quickly. "Yes, I do, actually. I'd better..."

Turning, she takes a few half-hearted steps back from the roof-edge, very conscious of the soft, melting feeling of the ash beneath her boots. Not snow at all— _obviously_ not snow. How did she not notice?

She listens carefully as she walks away… but there’s no sign of footsteps behind her. Lucy tells herself she’s relieved by this.

All the same, she can’t resist glancing back; just for a second. And when she does, she realises with a start just _how_ _close_ to the edge of the building she’s been standing— standing on the very lip of a six-storey building, in the dark, with an unnerving stranger who appeared from out of nowhere, talking about spaceships.


	2. Day 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Police boxes can be found in the strangest of places. Such as Richmond. In the dead of winter.

She was dreaming of the sea. Or water of some variety anyway. She could hear the pleasing, peaceful swish of soft waves rippling around her, lapping against her skin; the crisp coolness of the wind across her face; the taste of salt on her lips. Maybe there wasn’t any boat, but the steady motion of the water was blissfully relaxing.

She was enjoying it so much that at first she didn’t notice the rain— she thought it was just the mist of sea-foam lifted by the breeze. But then, gradually, the cold, fat drops began to seep through her clothes; dribble down her eyelashes. She turned her face away; pushed out with a few strokes of an ill-remembered front-crawl— but suddenly it was torrential, and the calm, familiar swell of the water began to heave, grasping at her body, dragging her by her sodden clothing until she couldn’t float anymore. The waves were suddenly mountains of water piling around her, higher and higher. She grasped for land, her desperate hands silhouetted against the sadistic, angry sky, and realised that the peaceful, lonely vista she had been enjoying was only an illusion and she had _no idea_ where she was; everything warped and smeared and distorted by the swollen surf and the pounding rain…

…And then, all at once: blackness. Utter blackness.

Lucy wakes up; shivering with cold and the feeling of spiteful raindrops still slithering down her spine.

For a moment she simply lays there, her heart continuing to pound against her ribs. Then: _a nightmare,_ she realises with relief, as the dim outlines of her bedroom begin to reform all around her. She pushes her chin deeper into her pillow, trying to force away the feeling of sea-water coursing down her throat. _A nightmare_ , _that’s all_. _Not real. Not real… although it_ is _freezing..._

She twists stiffly around and finds the source of her shivering: the other side of the bed cool and empty, the covers thrown carelessly back across her legs. For a moment she simply stares, unable to process… then, hearing the sound of someone pushing their shoes on across the room, she rakes a hand back through her hair, lifting her head reluctantly from the pillow.

“Harry?” she murmurs into the darkness, her voice rough and heavy with sleep. “…Are you going to work?”

The vague silhouette by the door pauses for a second, and Lucy has the sinking feeling that he’s deciding whether or not to pretend he didn’t hear her. But eventually Harry’s voice comes back to her:

“What are you doing awake Lu?” His words sound a little too light: “It’s a stupid time in the morning.”

Under the covers Lucy curls her cold legs up closer into her body, shivering as though icy water is seeping through her mattress.

“I… couldn’t sleep.” She whispers.

She watches Harry pat his pockets down, as if he’s forgotten something. Then he steps across the room and bends down to twist one small key off his keyring on the bedside table. “Nightmares?” he asks, voice laced with amusement.

Lucy meets his eyes and wonders if maybe she had cried out in her sleep; shouted for help as she slipped under the tumultuous ocean waves… _embarrassed_ herself entirely. She lays her head back down on the pillow and doesn’t answer him, and doesn’t think at all that the bed is still tipping backwards and forwards beneath her like a lifeboat in a storm.

Lightly, Harry runs his finger around her ear, pushing her hair away.

“I’ve got work to do sweetheart.” He tells her firmly “You should go back to sleep.”

“Yeah…”

Lying back down instantly makes Lucy ache for unconsciousness again. But, in the blackness behind her eyelids, she remembers the bone-chilling coldness of her nightmare and can’t quite keep her eyes closed.

“Is it important?” she questions, knowing that even though she can’t quite make out Harry’s facial expression she’s probably infuriating him.

With a bit of a sigh, he crouches down beside her at the edge of the bed, resting his arms on the mattress. “Life or death.” He answers, looking very frankly into her eyes. “I _need_ to go. And really Lu, you need to _sleep_. You look tired.”

“What… time is it?”

“Half four.”

“… That’s ridiculous.”

Harry laughs under his breath; places his hand on her arm: “Go back to sleep sweetheart.”

Obediently, Lucy closes her eyes again, far less afraid with Harry’s hand stroking her arm gently through the blankets. Her covers are warm once more and she can no longer feel the rain on her skin.

“Go back to sleep Lu. I won’t be long. Go back to sleep.”

“...It’s _far_ too early—”

“—Shhh. I know. Just sleep Lucy.”

She’s only hearing half of his words, drifting slowly back into unconsciousness. She thinks hazily how strange it is that nightmares are just as terrifying at twenty-nine as they are at ten. From somewhere undefined, a memory from long ago bubbles up: her mum waking up sobbing… and how _confused_ that made her… back when she was younger and her parents were still indestructible

Unable to help herself, Lucy murmurs into the dark: “I wish you didn’t always have to leave so early.”

She feels Harry’s hand pause against her shoulder. Almost instantly— like a wave flowing over her skin— she is cold again; every hair on her body prickling. Twisting deeper into the blankets, she moves her head and finds Harry gazing steadily back at her.

“Oh…” he replies after a few seconds, taking his hand away. “Do you miss me?” He asks, and he sounds amused, but somehow his voice is a little too sharp around the edges.

Feeling especially stupid now, Lucy can only roll her eyes and give him a pale smile: “Of course I do.”

Harry grins along with her, his mouth curling at the corner. He places one finger affectionately against her cheek. Then, abruptly, he seems to come to a decision:

“Come on then.”

“What?” Bemused, Lucy lifts her head from the pillow and Harry stands up again, pushing his thumbs into his pockets.

“Come with me.” He repeats.

“To _work_?”

“No-one will mind.” He says, in a tone that suggests he’s asking her to skip school, and Lucy sees him glance past her at the clock on the bedside table. “And if you’re not too keen on going back to sleep I promise you it’ll be an eye-opener.”

Lucy pushes herself up to sitting. She’s still tired, still cold. Smudged in her half-closed eyes the moonlight paints silver stripes across the ceiling behind Harry’s head. He’s looking at her expectantly.

“Really?” Lucy asks.

“Really.”

*

 

It becomes quickly apparent that wherever it is that Harry is being so urgently called away to, it _isn’t_ Whitehall. Flipping hurriedly through the cupboard for a suitable jacket, Lucy offers to call a taxi, only to be told that they won’t need one and that she should pick something warmer to wear because it’s minus one outside.

At five in the morning the streets of Richmond are eerily devoid of pedestrians. The streetlights beaming down at regular intervals make every corner look like a museum plinth that’s lost its exhibit, and as the two of them stride quickly along the frosted pavements, Lucy curls her gloved hands in her pockets and watches her breath flourish and fade and flourish and fade in front of her, and can’t help but feel a shiver of anticipation.

“I won’t get in the way?” she asks, as casually as she can. “I mean, if it’s an emergency …”

“It’s not an emergency.” Harry replies laconically. “It’s just a matter that needs clearing up; and the sooner the better.” He grins briefly across at her and Lucy is surprised by how energised he looks, eyes glittering eagerly in the dark. He holds out his hand to her and, infected by his excitement, Lucy takes it, feeling his fingers squeeze momentarily tight around hers.

However, ten minutes later, when he leads her into a deserted, grimy little lane just off Friars Stile, Lucy begins to get suspicious.

“Down here?” she says uncertainly, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling at the flat, dead sound of her voice.

“Mmm-hm.”

“Does this _go_ anywhere?” she asks, knowing full well that it doesn’t.

“Nope.” Harry confirms, unfazed: “Come on.”

He continues walking and, reluctantly, Lucy follows after him, leaving behind the dim semi-circle of light cast by the main road.

“I can think of quicker ways if you plan on having me murdered—”

Lucy stops short. She can tell by the quality of her voice that there’s something in front of her, although how close she isn’t too sure and she can’t see anything yet. Hearing that Harry has also stopped, she puts her hands out a little way in front of her and takes a couple more curious steps forward. A metre or so ahead, her gloved fingers find rough, warm, varnished wood.

For a moment she is puzzled; but as her eyes begin to adjust she can see the faint glow of nine letters glaring sternly down at her as if from the top of a door frame— a door frame she imagines is painted an authoritative dark blue and blends in perfectly with the ominous gloom of the alleyway.

Lucy can feel Harry beside her, his eyes watching hers.

“...Strange place to put a Police Box.” She suggests.

“Isn’t it?” Harry’s voice is heavy with irony.

“Although I suppose if violent criminals are going to be hanging about anywhere…You have a _key_?” Lucy takes her hands away from the Police Box, stepping back as Harry pushes a small silver object into the keyhole—the key he picked up from the bedside table, she remembers. It seems fairly impossible that he can even find it in the shadows.

“Looks that way.” He answers cheerily as the lock clicks. He gives the door a light push and a thin strand of white light appears between the wooden panels. “Coming in?”

Lucy looks at him, trying to tell from his face if he’s joking or not. In the darkness she can only see one sharp corner of his smile and his eyes glimmering with the same unsettling excitement she noticed earlier.

“I thought we were going to your work.” She reminds him quietly.

“You think I’m going to lock you in?” Harry teases, cocking his head, then rolls his eyes despairingly to the sky: “Oh fine then; I’ll go first…”

And he does exactly that, disappearing abruptly through the Police Box door, leaving Lucy standing alone and shivering in the cold.

For a moment she simply stares after him; at the cleft of bright white light neatly bisecting the dark blue rectangle of the Police Box. She casts a nervous glance back at the main road, feeling sure that someone must be watching her and laughing. Then, reluctantly, exhaling a curling cloud of frustration into the winter air, Lucy follows him inside.

“Harry…”

She stops dead.

Lucy has never been inside a Police Public Call Box. The last time Harry pointed it out to her, she remembers, they walked right past, and Lucy accepted it was just another post-war relic left to gather dust and graffiti on the street corner. But there were some things she assumed were true: four wooden walls, an old-fashioned telephone, a roof just above her head height.

She sees none of these.

Instead, the room that meets her eyes is _massive_ ; sprawling— a huge cavernous hollow that it would be impossible— _impossible—_ to contain within the four flimsy, wooden walls of the Police Box.

There is no _wood_ at all. The floor underneath Lucy’s shoes is metal and clanks as she steps onto it, haphazard gratings and panels and cables and wires curled up in corners like snakes ready to strike. Over her head a huge domed roof stretches, cathedral-like, held up by lofty, twining pillars of something that has more in common with trees or great branches of coral than with concrete or steel.

But Lucy’s unbelieving gaze is drawn instantly to the strangest thing of all: a column, running straight through the centre of the cavern, about the circumference of an oak tree, encased in glass and draped with cabling. And _glowing_ ; glowing with a luminous, ethereal blue, nothing any light-bulb could give off, but more reminiscent of those mysterious, unclassified sea creatures that trawl the very bottom of the ocean and lure their unsuspecting prey to their deaths with mesmeric lanterns dangling from their jaws.

The whole place is warm with static, and pulsing and buzzing and shifting under her feet, and Lucy has no doubt that in some awful, unimaginable way, everything around her is _alive_.

She takes another few, tremulous steps.

“What is this?” she whispers, unable to find the right emotion, her voice trickling out from between lips hardly moving.

“It’s the inside of a Police Box.”

Lucy turns around. Harry is standing by the door, watching her with his arms crossed and his eyes alive with the same impossible colours as the column behind her. The look of solemnity on his face cracks open as he meets Lucy’s wide-eyed, uncomprehending stare:

“No?” He shakes his head; raises an eyebrow: “Not going for it?”

Lucy blinks, a few times, in quick succession: “It’s… bigger on the—”

“— on the inside, yeah.”

Lucy presses her lips together until they make a thin pink line. While her voice seems to flutter around like a frightened sparrow in this improbable space, Harry’s seems to blend seamlessly with the sentient musings of the machinery surrounding them. Hearing this incomprehensible distinction, Lucy feels a frisson like icy water dribbling down her spine.

Harry holds out his hand to her:

“Come and see.” He suggests.

The flooring continues to rattle and clank beneath Lucy’s feet as she allows Harry to lead her up a short, make-shift ramp to the centre of the room. She walks slowly, as if creeping up on some dangerous animal, every hair on her body standing on end. It passes vaguely through her head that she would be safer if she took her boots off.

She gazes around, big eyes drinking it all in: the walls aren’t even straight, she notices; aren’t even pretending to follow the outline of the angular Police Box; they’re curved, and studded all over with hundreds of round ocean-coloured lights, giving the overall impression of being trapped inside an exotic, oversized golf-ball. Lucy’s mouth curves a little as she thinks this. Then she finds herself standing at an elaborate console of buttons and dials and switches, with the haunting blue of that central column dazzling her eyes and washing invitingly across her skin.

Harry’s eyes follow hers as she gazes up at it:

“What do you think?” he ventures.

“…What _is_ it?” Lucy replies, helplessly.

Harry smiles at this and takes hold of her hand again, twining their fingers together. Wordlessly, Lucy watches as he passes her palm above a control like a large, glass paperweight. Immediately, it begins to spin, and a ribbon of green snakes energetically around the central column like tinsel around a Christmas tree. Lucy takes an alarmed step back.

“What did I do?” she hisses.

“Nothing; nothing, it’s just… _noticing_ you.”

Lucy looks across at him and, to prove his point, Harry does the same thing, spreading out the fingers of his other hand above a whole row of switches, close but never touching. All around, the wall-lights begin to flicker, and underneath their hands the entire console seems to creak and shift, like it’s trying to move away.

Harry turns back to her and raises his eyebrows as if to say _‘see?’_ , and Lucy can feel her fear beginning to dissolve as the beauty of it all forces a tentative smile to inch across her lips.

She looks down again at the panels in front of her. There are no labels; no clue of what anything does.

“You still haven’t told me what it _is_.” She reminds him gently. “What _any_ of this is.”

Harry grins and crosses his arms: “Guess.” He suggests.

Lucy rolls her eyes: “I have no idea. I’m not _guessing_.”

“Oh, go on…”

“No.”

But he refuses to say any more and just stares at her expectantly. Eventually Lucy gives in, dropping her arms back to her sides in exasperation.

“I don’t know.” she casts a disbelieving eye over the entire impossible-looking cavern.

“It doesn’t even look… human.”

She can feel colour coming into her cheeks as she says this, but aliens are not as taboo as they once were and there _was_ a massive spaceship hovering in the sky on Christmas Day, so she thinks there’s at least some logic in her comment.

Harry clicks his fingers, startling her.

“Ten points.” He says gleefully. “And if it’s not human it’s…”

“… Alien?” Lucy finishes, watching him for approval. He gives her two thumbs up and Lucy laughs, shaking her head with vague incredulity.

“ _Aliens_ made this?” she reiterates, running her fingertips wonderingly across the mismatched controls beneath them. She gazes around herself once more, imagining every panel and light-bulb and wire being handled by non-human fingers; constructed on some far-distant planet maybe hundreds of light-years away from _here_. She isn’t even too sure what a light-year _is_ ; but just the thought sends a shiver of delight down her spine.

“Does that really surprise you?”

“Was it the Sycorax?” she ventures, pleased at herself for remembering the name but thinking even as she says it that those ugly, violent demon-things wouldn’t be capable of building something so _wondrous_ looking.

Harry laughs, a short dismissive sound, and Lucy thinks quite smugly that she’s probably earned another ten points.

“The Sycorax?” He scoffs, pronouncing the name with disdain.

“Well, I’m not exactly an expert.” Lucy pouts, trying to look offended.

“No. But still; it must have occurred to you at some point in the last hour and a half to wonder why I keep the key to the front door of an alien space-craft next to the one for your patio.”

The tone of his voice doesn’t shift, his laconic arrogance the same as ever; and there is hardly any movement in his expression. But that one sentence seems to unfurl like smoke into the air between them. Almost inexplicably, Lucy feels her smile falter a little at the corners.

“Sorry?” she says brightly, hopeful that she’s misheard.

“This;” Harry tries again, twirling a finger in the air to indicate everything around them “was not built by the Sycorax; it was _grown_ , actually, on a planet hundreds of thousands of light-years away from here. It’s the technological pinnacle example of four-dimensional travel. You’d never guess it, would you? It’s called a TARDIS— or Time And Relative Dimension In Space if you feel like shunning acronyms. That’s why the inside seems so much bigger than the outside: in reality they’re two completely separate dimensions— ”

“...Why are you telling me this?” Lucy interrupts, in voice that's supposed to be humorous but comes out much smaller and colder than she expected: “You know I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She tries to soften her words with a smile but, again, her mouth doesn’t seem to respond.

“Are you not interested?”

"I... of course I am, it's just…"

Harry seems to consider her question: “I’m telling you—mainly— because it’s mine." he replies carefully, and Lucy’s stammerings die in her throat.

"This TARDIS belongs to me— and I won’t claim to have built it, but I do _know_ it, almost inside-out. Like I said: it was created a very long way away, a very long time ago, by an extraordinary race of beings known as the Time Lords. Unfortunately, at the last count, there were only two of us left in the entire universe.”

For one beautiful, deluded moment, Lucy’s brain convinces her she hasn’t understood. She offers Harry that cautious smile of someone who doesn’t know whether to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and hopes an agreeable look will suffice for either and the conversation will continue.

But Harry doesn’t continue. He just looks calmly across at her, and the imperceptible broadening of his grin twists Lucy’s guts with horrifying conviction.

“...Two of us?” Lucy echoes, not able to gain enough control of her voice to put any inflection on the last word.

Harry looks almost apologetic.

“Just spit out the first thing that comes into your head.” he suggests delicately.

Lucy can do nothing but stare at him; and she has no control over the words that come, slipping through her teeth without her bidding, chilling her to the bone:

“You’re an alien.” she says.

“Well; yeah. But you already knew that.”

“…What?”

“You knew it, the first time you kissed me.”

Lucy feels her mouth twisting as she tries quite desperately not to cry. She can remember it: sitting conspicuously on the fourth step of the grand staircase at the Hospital Club; her hands pressing eagerly against Harry’s chest; the sharp, fast throb of his heartbeat against her skin. It’s possibly the only thing he could’ve said to convince her he’s telling the truth.

"…Didn't you?"

Lucy replies, deathly quiet: “You have two hearts.”

“I do.”

“You’re an alien, with two hearts.” Her words are _ridiculous_.

“Um. Yep.”

“Oh _God_ …”

Exhaling shakily into her palms, Lucy feels a déjà-vu of her nightmare: sea-water swirling menacingly up around her chin as she struggles to keep breathing.

“Lucy…”

Harry says her name, but his voice comes to her as if from miles away; as if from hundreds of thousands of _light-years_ away. He takes half a step towards her— but at the movement Lucy instantly recoils and suddenly she is stumbling blindly back down the rattling gangway, running for the safe, familiar blue wood of the Police Box door which, in this instant, seems to be the only thing in her eye-line that makes any kind of sense.

She grabs hold of the handle and pulls, wrenching at it with all her strength, wanting to run out into the cold night air. But the door doesn’t move. She pulls in a sobbing breath and unhooks the chain and flicks the snib and tries again— but still nothing; hardly a creak. Furious, she rattles the door handle.

“It’s a bit locked…”

“You locked the door!?” Lucy demands, spinning round.

Harry has come around to her side of the console, but is leaning back against it, not seeming hugely concerned about following her.

"Well I had the idea you might make a run for it." He replies bluntly.

“You’re an alien!” Lucy repeats.

“It won’t change just because you keep saying it.”

Lucy continues to stare at him, wild-eyed; but his tone is so unexpectedly close to petulant that she finds herself with no retort. Dumb, shaking, she presses herself back against the warmth of the incongruous door, and black spots begin to bloom painfully across her vision like she’s running out of oxygen. Her cheeks are wet and cold and no matter what she does she can't feel her fingers, and, _oh god,_ she's _drowning_ ; she's never wakened up and now she's _drowning_ , water gurgling in her throat...

Mercifully, Harry doesn't move, holding her icy gaze across the six metres or so of alien technology that separates them. He doesn’t attempt to come any closer; but eventually he breaks the silence and Lucy hears his voice in her ears, horribly normal:

“Don’t you want to know where I’m from?” he asks quietly.

“No!” Lucy snaps, shaking her head, then: “No! Earth, you’re from Earth; you’re from London, just like me.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t believe any of _this_.” Lucy corrects bleakly.

The phantom of a smile flits across Harry's mouth: “Why not?”

“Because it’s… _madness_!”

“Madness?” Harry echoes. He uncrosses his arms, leaning forward to gaze at her imploringly.

“Lucy; I met you on Christmas Day, on the snowy rooftop of Surrey Council County Hall, eight hours after a third of the population had almost leapt to their deaths under the influence of alien hypnosis. You’re well-acquainted with _madness_ , Lu. And you’re more than well-acquainted with _aliens_.”

As he speaks, Lucy sees it all again: London six storeys below her, encased in white and blurred around the edges, the bitter wind whipping her hair about her face. She remembers snow that wasn’t snow disintegrating under her boots, and on Harry’s tongue. She remembers not wanting to go home.

“…Where are you from?” She asks tonelessly.

For a long moment Harry doesn’t answer, perhaps waiting for her to look up; challenge his stare. But Lucy refuses. She feels the floor move a little as he takes a few steps closer.

“A planet called Gallifray.” He tells her coolly. “Not too different from here really, except, well, older. A lot older. Two suns, lots of desert, silver trees… I think you’d probably like it.”

There is a smile in his voice as he says this which makes Lucy push the back of her hand against her mouth to stop her lips from quivering.

“But you look…you look _human_.”

Harry laughs: “ _Star Trek_ entirely passed you by didn’t it?”

But Lucy has no vestige of humour left and simply glowers at him until he shrugs and replies, a little touchily: “It’s a quirk of genetics, that’s all. Life evolves similarly on similar planets.”

“Then why are you here?” she interrupts darkly, “If— if _Gallifray_ … ” (the word seems to get stuck in her throat, as though it wasn’t made for human tongues to speak) “…is so beautiful… and so far away?”

“I never said it was beautiful.” Harry corrects, taking another step or two away from the central console. For the first time, Lucy sees his gaze drift, as he glances up into the rafters winding around each other, ivy-like, far above their heads.

“There was a war.” He explains simply. “I escaped. Eventually—eventually— I found myself here… I was on this planet only two weeks before I met you.” He tilts his head a little to one side, holding her gaze: “You’re the only person who knows I exist, Lucy.”

“You’ve been lying to me.” Lucy replies tightly: “Since we met you’ve been lying to me.”

It is not what she intended to say. But for a moment Harry looks entirely taken aback, and Lucy realises desolately that in all his expectations of how this revelation would go, this particular objection has never occurred to him.

For a long minute, Harry appraises Lucy’s shivering form in wary silence. Then, holding his palms upwards in an approximation of surrender, he asks:

“What else could I have done? If you don’t believe me now you would never have believed me then.”

Lucy wants to say she _doesn’t_ believe him now— that she _never_ _will_. She wants to say the word _madness_ again, and lots of others like it; but they would be brutal, futile lies and crumble, insubstantial as dust, to the floor the moment they leave her lips. She looks at Harry, hearing the honesty of his voice reverberate around the room, and can’t feel herself breathing anymore.

Taking advantage of her silence, Harry steps once again towards her and Lucy flinches, starting for the door even though she knows she can’t get through it.

“Don’t.” she warns sharply “Don’t _touch_ me, don’t—”

But she doesn’t have the heart left, and Harry ignores her. He grasps hold of her arms, pulling her to him, and although Lucy wrenches and twists against his grip, sobs are clenching at her chest and she can hardly see for tears.

“Let me go…let me _go—_ ”

“—Shhh, Lucy, shhh, stop it; quiet now…”

Pathetically, Lucy continues to struggle, twisting her fingernails as hard as she can into his skin. But Harry simply tightens his arms around her, forcing her forehead against his shoulder, and in the blackness behind Lucy’s eyelids she can see that sea again; that treacherous sea, tossing and swirling beneath her body as the sun beats down on her skin.

“You bastard… you _bastard_ …” She whispers miserably into the lapels of Harry’s jacket, and she hears him exhale a breath of laughter against her ear before he bends down and, despite her resistance, kisses her softly at the corner of her lips.

“Shhh sweetheart… No need for the sentimentality.”

And Lucy, hardly conscious— mostly _hating_ him— suddenly feels a whole new wave of tears swell upon her, and she breaks down in his arms.

 

*

  
The Tardis is thousands of years old, and huge beyond comprehension. Yes, the inside is bigger than the outside, but it’s really just a nifty trick of temporal mechanics. It’s a space-craft, as mentioned— it travels through space; but it’s also a time-machine, and travels through time. Lucy laughs at this, but Harry doesn’t look impressed and so her smile withers quickly. It can travel through time, he repeats: the past, the future…  _any_ future; other dimensions…

For days Lucy refuses to believe it—for some reason the glorious machine isn’t capable of any of this _right now_ , so she is denied a demonstration. But as she sits alone in the bedroom that is tacitly hers, her ear pressed suspiciously to the wall, the possibilities of it all start to unfurl in shaky silent movie pictures across her brain and she feels some part of herself begin to collapse into terrified silence.

God knows why the thing looks like a Police Box.

Harry’s planet is called Gallifray, but he doesn’t call himself a Gallifrayan: he calls himself a Time Lord. He says he’s earned that, and Lucy has no choice but to believe him. It does _look_ beautiful, Harry concedes (with just a hint of bitterness) but it mostly isn’t: two suns, lots of desert, silver trees… traitors and hypocrites and curses and _war_ — the last great Time War, he enunciates, in a voice that contains something close to awe; the war that slaughtered half a solar system.

He’s 905, it turns out, in human years. That’s 1212 in Gallifrayan.

Mostly, Lucy keeps her mouth closed and simply listens. Or at least, she hears Harry as he speaks, even if the words warp and fade and drift apart before their meanings reach her brain. After that first night (hours and hours of semi-consciousness, feeling the tiny, hardly-noticeable tremors of the sentient spaceship that cocoons her) taking it all in becomes easier. But every now and again— when Harry talks to her and it doesn’t sound like him anymore, with words and names and concepts she can’t begin to grasp— Lucy finds herself trembling, crying silently with her hand over her mouth, because it feels as though her life has been torn into tiny shreds and scattered across the cold, shimmering, mismatched flooring.

After one such occasion, Lucy sits against the pulsing, alien walls of the inside of the police box, the TARDIS, her head resting on Harry’s shoulder. Her face is red and sore from tears (all gone now, finished, like a box of tissues) and her hair is wet and sticks to her forehead. She doesn’t blink, because her eyelashes are rough with salt and she is watching the blue light of the central column—the engine, she’s learnt— which moves up and down in a regular rhythm and keeps her steady; like a horizon. Harry hasn’t spoken in a while. He’s waiting for her.

“It’s not your real name is it?” Lucy asks eventually, allowing the words to slip quietly from between her teeth. She’s not sure she’s made any sound at all, but Harry seems to hear nonetheless. His shoulder shifts slightly beneath her cheek and Lucy imagines he is looking at her.

“Oh no.” he agrees after a moment, and Lucy can hear the most _alien_ smile in his voice and pictures the corner of his mouth twisting.

“I have so many.”

He sighs, heavily, as though the weight of all of these names is crushing down on his shoulders. And he gazes upwards at the organic architecture of the roof that is far too far above them.

“What they called me…” he says, and his voice is the low murmur of an approaching storm, crackling with electricity. “…names to strike horror into the heart of the smallest child and the oldest, most terrible kingdoms of the galaxies. I was Prydon’s darkest design; the eternal devastation and conqueror of the everlasting fire… the last, great King of Judah— Lord and _Master_ of all things...”

Still Lucy doesn’t blink; her eyes are glass, not quite real anymore and she doesn’t trust them.

“What should I call you?” she asks, voice small in the cavern that shouldn’t be here. Interesting how steady it is.

“Oh. Harry will do fine.”

 


	3. Day 201

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (A bit out of sequence, but thought I'd post this chapter now, after the reappearance of the Cybermen and the Master in last week's _World Enough and Time._ )
> 
> Ghosts of all kinds. Just no Ghost Shift.  
> Lucy and Harry take shelter in the TARDIS during the Cyberman invasion (Season 2, _Army of Ghosts_ & _Doomsday_ ). Or at least, for a while. Everyone loves a massacre, after all.

“What’s wrong?”

Lucy is still staring at the innocent little mantle clock, crease deepening between her eyebrows.

_4.27._

“Is this right?” she asks, tapping a tentative fingernail against the glass.

Behind her, Harry sounds faintly scandalised.

“I’m a Time Lord.” He replies acidly.

“…Sorry.”

Lucy _can_ see his point.

But still: the more she tries to ignore it the louder the incessant ticking seems to become. She glances once more at the nonchalant little clock-face. _4.28._

Then, abruptly, Lucy tucks a loose strand of hair back behind her ear.

“We’ve missed the ghost shift.” She murmurs.

“…What?”

Incomprehension is not an expression that sits easily on Harry’s features. Lucy turns to meet his gaze.

“We’ve missed the ghost shift.” She repeats nervously. “No ghosts.”

 

*

 

“What _are_ they?” Lucy asks, just beginning to find her breath again: it comes out in shredded gasps, like little fluttering scraps of newspaper, and she’s not at all convinced by Harry’s assurances about the Yale lock.

“They’re called Cybermen.”

The TARDIS is making uncooperative noises underneath Harry’s hands and he answers Lucy without looking at her. In response, Lucy nods vaguely and glances down at her own fingers, her knuckles showing up white like luminescent sea-shells in the dim lighting.

Why is she _nodding_?

“Cybermen?” she repeats dumbly.

“Or at least they used to be;” Harry corrects himself. He strides around the console and leans across Lucy to activate the video screen. A wobbling image of the outside of the TARDIS materialises, and they both watch the giant, expressionless Cyberman—somehow even more terrifying in the tattered monochrome— as it peers calculatingly at the deceptively simple lock of the police box’s door.

Harry moistens his lips.

“…but it looks like they’ve been upgraded quite dramatically since we last—”

But the TARDIS is suddenly rocked by a well-aimed laser-blast, sending both of them sprawling violently forward across the console. Lucy scrabbles for a hand-hold and, trying to stop herself from screaming, manages to bite her tongue instead and grimaces at the sudden stab of pain in her temple.

She lisps at Harry around the blood in her mouth:

“You _know_ them?”

She glances up: the Cyberman is still on-screen, staring at the un-moved TARDIS door, its right hand slightly smoking.

“Oh, yes, we’re old friends.” Harry replies “Almost.”

Lucy looks across at him helplessly; wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.

“What?”

“Well. I say ‘friends’…”

“What do you _mean_?”

“I mean enemies.”

Lucy closes her eyes. She feels tears swimming around behind her eyelids but her thoughts aren’t coherent enough at the moment to figure out what they’re there for.

Her ankles are shaking.

“ _God_ , Harry…” She pushes a hand back through her hair, needing to grab hold of something. “I-I don’t understand…all this time; the ghosts—?”

“ _Not_ ghosts.” Harry reminds her sternly, lifting his finger “I told you. More like shadows, or footprints; their basic shape pressing against the fabric between realities.”

Lucy is surprised at the bitter burst of laughter that escapes between her lips.

“ _Between realities_?” she repeats, incredulous; then immediately straightens up and pushes her hand against her mouth to stem her tears.

“Between realities.” Harry says again, coolly. “The Cybermen are extinct in this timeline. Have been for decades. This lot must’ve skipped through from some entirely different universe…”

“But they’re here _now_.” Lucy interjects, turning back with her fingers still against her lips. “They’re _here_ , and that one’s outside trying to _break the door down_ …” her words catch in her teeth and she turns away again, wiping a hand across her eyes and glancing nervously at the TARDIS door, which is unmoved but nevertheless looks terrifyingly flimsy compared to the horrendous silver monster she knows is behind it.

“It won’t get in.” Harry enunciates steadily, an edge of impatience in his voice.

Lucy glares back at him as the TARDIS jolts again under her feet, a sprinkling of red sparks falling from the ceiling. She has words ready on her tongue to demand _how can you be so sure of that...?_ But, sensing the futility of her protests, she manages to swallow them back and simply curls her fingers a little tighter around the guard rail.

It is in this moment, while they are glowering at each other, that Lucy notices the sudden silence that seems to have fallen along with the sparkling electricity.

Uncertainly, her gaze flickers towards the door.

No movement. Nothing. Quiet as the grave.

Whispering, she says: “Is that… is it gone?”

Harry looks back at her; offers half a smile. It’s not particularly sympathetic.

“Doubt it.”

Suddenly, another noise comes— an angry crackling like radio interference that reverberates violently around the too-high walls and right inside Lucy’s head. She clamps her hands immediately over her ears; but it doesn’t help.

At the same time, out of the corner of her eye, she sees the video-screen on the console suddenly consumed in a blizzard of static. Harry notices too and slides around to get a better look, eyes screwed up as if the picture slowly resolving itself there offends him far more than the ear-splitting feedback. Momentarily, he catches Lucy’s wide-eyed stare and raises a questioning eyebrow.

Then the voice comes, seeping unhappily through the speaker grille of the TARDIS console; the most horrendous monotone, raking nails down Lucy’s skin:

“ _This broadcast is for human kind. Cybermen now occupy every landmass on this planet. But you need not fear. Cybermen will remove fear. Cybermen will remove sex and class and colour and creed. You will become identical. You will become like us.”_

 

*

 

“They’re vultures really. Scavengers.” Harry begins carefully, when Lucy’s tears have faded to apathy and all the TV channels carry the same video, the same alien with the metal face and the dead eyes impassively proclaiming victory.

Lucy presses her sore, red cheek against the cool leather as Harry talks, telling her the back-story she didn’t ask for, and letting her eyelids drift closed because just the sound of his voice soothes, like gentle fingers running through her hair.

“…Centuries ago, their empire was crumbling, and their planet was dying: wrapped in an ice age, just like yours was. The only way they could survive was to cybernetically enhance their own bodies to withstand the plummeting temperatures.”

“There’s _people_ inside of them?” Lucy asks vaguely. Harry narrows his eyes.

“Well, they’re not people anymore. They’re Cybermen. They’re all just Cybermen… Anyway: as time went on, their genetics evolved so they _couldn’t_ survive without their cybernetic parts— their bodies grew weaker and weaker, wasting away, and they needed more and more adjustments just to be able to…walk about in the sunlight; to breathe the air.” He rolls his eyes, but entirely without humour “Horrendously painful of course, having metal soldered, _wired_ into skin—but they _needed_ to survive.”

He lets this drift between them for a moment, a breeze of black ice, prickling the hairs on Lucy’s arms.

“I don’t suppose they ever asked _why_ … Eventually, they became more machine than they were flesh.”

If she didn’t know him so well, Lucy would hardly have noticed the smear of disgust around his words. As it is, this unexpected emotion drips like icy water down her spine and she looks across at him and realises he is looking at nothing.

“So they trawl the galaxy: relentless scavengers, searching out new bodies to upload their consciousness into. They’ve done it for so long I doubt they even understand the concept of empire anymore; they’re just computers, performing the only task they’ve ever known, over and over again into infinity. Earth is a beautiful harvest, just a field of ripe, innocent crops. They’ll take all this planet’s little human bodies— every one of you. They’ll take you and convert you, put you into those metal suits and make you into soldiers…”

Lucy pulls a damp hair away from her cheek.

It’s probably been hours— but Lucy refuses to glance at her watch and know for sure, because building such a careful and meticulous scaffolding of hours and minutes and seconds around the enslavement of her race seems somehow terribly offensive. She’s not sure why.

Harry is restless. He disconnected the sound from the video-screen, so that every now and again when Lucy strains her neck she can see the Cyber-leader’s skewed, metal, Jack O’ Lantern face miming back at her; but that didn’t keep him occupied for long, and now he’s pacing around the gangway, occasionally fiddling with the video-screen, expounding the origins of villainous alien empires and playing surreptitious games of _Snake III_ on his phone. Lucy feels numb all over her body, but she thinks she recognises his irritation with just _waiting_ for the end.

“What’s _happening_?” She asks dully, after an unquantifiable length of time.

“The human race is being upgraded.”

“Oh; yes, I’d heard something about that.”

Harry smiles an indefinable smile: “Not _so_ blonde then.” He shrugs. “What does it matter? We’re safe in here, until it’s over. Anyway: I thought you didn’t care what happens to them? I thought you didn’t _like_ any of this?”

“It doesn’t—” Lucy has lost the thread of his comment. She pushes herself back up to sitting. “I don’t care what happens to _them._ ” She reiterates instead “I care what happens to _us_. How long are we going to stay here? What kind of world… what’s going to be left for us when the Cybermen are finished?”

She thought she would stammer over the harshness of these last words, but finds that she doesn’t. Harry seems to have expected the same thing: he looks at her for a long moment with his arms folded across his chest.

“I thought it was going to be _ours_.” She adds, feeling her fingers start to tremble again: “What’s the point of being the Queen of a world where everyone’s a _robot_?”

“I wouldn’t…call them robots.” Harry advises, with a pretend wince of pain. “They can be surprisingly touchy…Y’know, for big, metal assassins with emotional inhibitors implanted in their chests.”

Too tired to be amused, Lucy just continues to gaze plaintively at him. Eventually, Harry sighs.

“You want to know what’s happening, Lucy? At this moment, there are Cybermen occupying every home and office and school and shopping centre on this planet. In every city there’s a conversion hub— a factory, basically— secretly and painstakingly constructed over the last two months while you bright-sparks were being distracted by the faceless ghosts of your long-lost loved ones. When the Cyber-leader gives the order, the troops will begin conversion on a massive scale. Anyone who resists will be immediately executed. The basement of Torchwood One, just three streets away, has forty conversion units installed and ready for operation; they’re just waiting for the word. Should be about, oh, ten minutes from now?”

Lucy stares at him.

Harry points a finger over his shoulder.

“I was watching it on the telly.” He explains.

On-screen, the endless video of the Cyber-leader’s speech is still playing; but, as Harry clicks a button—Lucy watching wide-eyed from behind his shoulder—the one image suddenly separates into six very different pictures. The Cyber-leader remains— but next to it there is the grainy live feed Lucy recognises from just outside the TARDIS, and the one lone, patient Cyberman still standing guard waiting for them to open the door. The next image is black—the camera blasted apart in crossfire, Harry explains. Below that there is a roof-level view of Grange Road, frighteningly deserted aside from one crumpled body lying in the gutter; then, a startlingly full-colour picture of the reception of Canary Wharf, packed with obedient rows of Cybermen marching endlessly past. Finally, in the last segment, there is a view obviously taped from a camera a few blocks away, which shows the entire front of the Torchwood tower and a good bit of the surrounding London skyline in murky greyscale.

“You’ve been watching this all along? You knew what was happening?” Lucy asks distantly.

The corner of Harry’s mouth curls in a macabre smile: “I’ve probably got more of a stomach for massacres than you do.”

Lucy doesn’t answer. Her eyes keep being drawn by the glinting of fluorescent light off silver steel as Cyberman after identical Cyberman stamps through Torchwood’s ransacked lobby.

“There’s so _many_ of them.”

Harry makes a sound of sardonic agreement: “Yep.”

For the next few minutes they both watch in silence. Soon the Torchwood reception is mostly empty again, all the Cybermen moved further into the building, aside from an unmovable quartet standing sentinel just inside the big rotating doorway. In the view of the London skyline, there is an explosion of dust in the distance.

Lucy is about to ask what it is when something else catches her eye. She points at the screen, but Harry notices it in the same instant.

“Where does he think he’s going?” he murmurs, clicking on the fuzzy image that shows one blue edge of their TARDIS and the incongruous flowered curtains of the spare bedroom beyond. The picture enlarges just in time for Lucy to see the Cyberman’s great silver heel disappear out of the bedroom door.

“Why would it be leaving?” she asks immediately, casting an instinctive glance towards the front of the TARDIS; but Harry doesn’t answer. He clicks another button and the image switches to the view of Grange Road.

It takes a few seconds, but they see the Cyberman appear again, marching out through the front door and down the stairs. And from every other house the same thing: Cyberman after Cyberman leaving their hostages and lining up in perfect rank and file down the middle of the street.

Then, as one, they begin to march.

There is a sharp twist of hope in Lucy’s stomach. She turns to Harry:

“Are they going away?”

Harry takes a second to answer: “They’re being recalled to Torchwood.” He says, with odd satisfaction.

“What does that mean?”

“…Unexpected trouble.” He replies, although _he_ doesn’t sound troubled _at all_.

“Trouble for us or trouble for the Cybermen?”

Harry drags his eyes away from the screen just long enough to grin wickedly at her: “For the Cybermen.”

He clicks again and the wide-view of Canary Wharf and the London skyline fills the screen. Peering closely, Lucy can just see the thousands of Cybermen beginning to converge on the Torchwood tower— again, that unexpected nudge of hope.

Beside her, Harry ducks down, rummaging around the TARDIS console.

“If you see a tall, skinny man with ridiculous hair and a fondness for wearing trainers with his suits, let me know will you?”

“Who would that be?”

“Hmm… a friend of mine.”

“And when you say ‘friend’..?”

With surprising genuineness, Harry laughs. But he doesn’t elaborate: simply offers her a biscuit packet, produced from out of nowhere:

“Hobnob?”

Tentatively returning his grin, Lucy takes one.

Chewing her Hobnob, Lucy watches the Cybermen filing into Torchwood One. With every body that passes through the doors she feels a little more relief. It’s a childish idea—out of sight, out of mind—but to Lucy’s brain, numbed by blow after blow from discordant emotions, it’s a comfort.

So it’s with special dread then that, only a few peaceful minutes a later, Lucy screws up her eyes and takes a step forward closer to the video-screen. With an unsteady hand she tries to brush lint from the glass. It doesn’t work.

“Harry?”

“Mmm?” He’s by the front door, examining the latch for any damage done by the Cyberman. He has his laser screwdriver in his hand and he doesn’t look up when Lucy speaks again:

“Can Cybermen fly?”

“Fly?” he looks up now, sounding incredulous “No. Why?”

Lucy holds his gaze across the gangway. He raises his eyebrows expectantly and Lucy moistens her lips and drops her eyes back to the screen.

“It’s just, there’s something… I think there’s something new.”

When Harry sees it, all the traces of humour fall from his face. Commandeering the video-screen, he twists a dial and the picture zooms in and in and in.

Beside the shimmering glass of Canary Wharf, another object has emerged— two objects, actually. One roughly conical but with rounded edges, glinting burnished gold in the sunlight; the other a similar shape but black, and with three protrusions on the front: two like mismatched arms, and one further up where the head might be, a long rod with a sphere on the end like an eye.

Eyebrows slightly raised, Harry takes a half-step backwards. And Lucy feels something like all the blood in her body turning to ice because she’s never seen him scared before.

“That’s…” for a second he almost looks like he’s going to laugh “Not possible…”

But the two objects remain. They’ve come to a stop now, parallel with the top of the tower, and the first object has started spinning lazily in place like a cork dropped in water.

There’s a pause. On the top of the second object—the one that looks like it might be alive—there are two lights, and Lucy sees them flashing. Then, as if this were an order, one side of the gold object slides smoothly open. From this gaping hole, without any kind of warning, something shoots violently out of the side to join the other two objects already hovering in mid-air. It takes Lucy a moment to see: but it’s another one of the smaller metal creatures, identical to the first, except this one is bronze instead of black.

As Lucy watches, the container continues turning, faster and faster, and even though it looks only big enough to hold one, it continues expelling metal creatures one after another—and another and another and another— until in a matter of seconds there’s hundreds of them, _thousands_ of them, filling the sky; and they keep coming…

Lucy feels her heart in her throat. Whatever they are, they’re not Cybermen; but they’re doing just as the Cybermen were doing: lining up, falling into formation, sweeping through the sky with military precision.

Beside her, Harry is horrendously pale.

He shakes his head, just slightly.

“No.” he says decisively; and before Lucy can do _anything_ , he slams down the lever beside the video-screen and the TARDIS rushes into life again, multi-coloured warning lights flashing up all across the console. Lucy scrabbles for a hand-hold once more as the grating beneath her feet begins to jerk and shudder and throw her off-balance like a defective fairground ride.

“Harry?!”

He dashes around to the other side of the console, pulling at dials and pushing buttons and twisting levers... Lucy can see the swirling Gallifreyan figures on the clock-face contorting and changing…

“Where are we going?!” she shouts above the grate and scream of the time-rotor struggling into life. Steam is beginning to curl upwards from somewhere beneath the flooring.

Harry doesn’t answer her.

“Where are we _going!?”_

Still no reply: his eyes remain fixed on the video-screen.

Then he slams the lever again.

It’s even more violent than normal. Lucy is thrown sideways, winded against the guardrail, and crumples to the floor. There is an ominous cracking and all the lights embedded in the walls on the port side flare and then sputter into darkness.

“Don’t you _dare_!” Harry bellows at the console, thumping his palms against the banks of switches. The TARDIS, engine groaning and heaving, makes a series of disgruntled clanking noises and Lucy feels the floor shift under her like the whole ship is coming apart. She braces herself back against the metal railings, vision smeared by angry tears and temperamental lighting.

“I thought you said it _wouldn’t fly_?!” she screams at him, but Harry just snarls back: “Shut _up_ Lucy!”

Then; one last, ferocious jolt: despite Lucy’s tight hold, her head smashes back against the railing and for a second she almost loses consciousness, stars flying everywhere...

But she hangs on— and is rewarded by sudden, merciful stillness.

The TARDIS has stopped.

A few seconds, then Lucy hears a scrambling; Harry pulling himself back to his feet. The TARDIS is no longer screaming, but hissing and whirring and clattering; furious and offended and bruised all over.

Lucy puts her hand up to the back of her head; winces away. Her fingers are red and sticky. There’s a deep, menacing ringing bouncing between her ears.

“Harry?” she raises her eyes to find him, peering through the dark and the steam.

He’s already at the door, pulling the chain off the Yale lock.

For a moment nothing makes sense at all— all Lucy knows is she doesn’t want him to turn the latch; she doesn’t want to be left here without him. If he goes outside, she knows he _won’t come back_ :

“Harry… Harry, please don’t go out there.” she pleads, trying desperately to raise her voice above a whisper “Please don’t, I don’t want to…I don’t want…”

But she shields her eyes against the flare of unexpected sunlight— and when she looks again, he’s gone.

 

*

 

For a moment that seems to drag on into eternity, Lucy stares at the open doorway. She blinks— but the TARDIS is enveloped in a horrible, cloying, dusty darkness and she can’t make out very much. From somewhere behind the walls she can hear a continuous _hissing_ , like the broken seal of a gas tank.

Taking a long breath in, Lucy reaches up to grab hold of the guard-rail one more time. She counts to five: then wrenches herself back to her feet.

It is deceitfully welcoming—that tiny sliver of gleaming pavement and the bright blue summer sky. As Lucy edges herself cautiously around the TARDIS door into the sunlight, she stays staring at that grey concrete for as long as she can, not anxious to look up and acknowledge the gleaming metal aliens swooping murderously above her head. It’s only as her eyes become re-accustomed to the brightness that she sees the tiny, innocuous spots of blood spattered against the kerb-stones.

They’re _screaming_ —that’s the first thing she notices, and she presses her hands to her ears. The stocky, flying metal aliens are screaming, over and over again as they shoot at the buildings and the people below them. And the humans are screaming too; even cowering in their houses, Lucy can hear them screaming. She closes her eyes— it sounds like Malcassairo.

“Harry?!” Lucy shouts for him, and her voice breaks on the first attempt. She tries again: “ _Harry_!!”

There’s no answer, and for the next few seconds Lucy just stands, pressing herself back against the side of the TARDIS, forcing her breathing to slow; forcing herself not to panic.

“Come on Lucy… stop being pathetic… stop it now, just _stop_ it… do something _useful_ …”

She sweeps her eyes over the scene around her. Cars are lying abandoned in the middle of road, doors still swinging, alarms blaring although swallowed up in the more terrifying sound of the battle going on above them. Smoke is rising from the burnt frontage of one of the houses. But there’s no people. No sign of movement.

She lifts her gaze: above the rooftops, the tall glimmering shape of Canary Wharf rises up, just around the corner, surrounded by aliens.

“Oh god.” says Lucy, and closes her eyes again.

But suddenly, just to her left, there is the huge crash and scream of twisted metal, and the car whose alarm had been blaring so incessantly is abruptly on its roof, rocking side to side, orange flames licking hungrily at its steel underbelly.

Lucy—who’d dropped instinctively to the ground at the noise— clutches at the TARDIS and scrambles back to her feet.

Then— staring wide-eyed at the burning wreck— she begins to run.

She runs as fast as she can, and is at the end of the street before the flames find the petrol tank and she hears the boom and the rain of blazing shrapnel hitting the road.

Her bare feet cut and bleeding, Lucy stumbles round the corner, not wanting to stop but black spots erupting across her vision, her lungs burning for lack of oxygen. She drops clumsily to her knees and crawls to the other side of a pillar-box, trying desperately to keep out of sight.

The aliens are still gliding menacingly overhead in perfect formation, deployed troops on the field of battle: still screaming, still shooting. Grimacing at the stabbing pain in her ribs, Lucy follows them with her eyes as they pass by. She was hardly aware of it in her panic, but as she gazes down the street, she sees Canary Wharf is barely half a mile away.

She gasps another painful breath into her body, trying to convince herself to get back to her feet again, to get up and find Harry. But a tiny movement just in the corner of her eye-line draws her attention.

It’s a hand. A human hand—still attached to a human body, but the body itself obscured from Lucy’s view by the cars parked bumper to bumper along the pavement.

The hand is twitching.

Lucy feels her stomach clench. She tries to look away, to ignore it, but as she watches it, it twitches again. And again.

She wants to be sick, the bile rising in her throat; but Lucy gets back to her hands and knees and forces herself to crawl shakily across, clenching her teeth, ducking between the cars. The hand keeps twitching: every few seconds, another involuntary tremor. As she moves, Lucy can see the spasm of the arm the hand is attached to; and then, thrown to the side of the road, the perfectly un-moving torso attached to the arm.

“ _Shit_.” Lucy jerks back, scrambling to get away but tripping and falling against the side of a car.

The body is quite still. A human body, yes; a man, just a little older than she is. Short. Warm hazel eyes.

One side of his chest has been peeled open, the skin and muscle cut away and pulled back, like with a surgeon’s knife. Inside, Lucy glimpses cold silver, like bubbling nickel has been poured straight into the bloody cavity. Lucy can see the bulge of his heart; she can see the wires threaded hurriedly through and protruding out of it.

The arm, the arm that’s twitching, has an ugly gash ripped down one side; a long rod of metal, half-embedded, shoulder to elbow.

There’s blood pooling around his head— so much blood Lucy thinks the back half of his skull has been torn away, but _thank god_ she can’t see. Behind him, littering the road, are sharp shards and spars of metal: abandoned tools. Behind _them_ : two Cybermen, sprawled across the concrete.

Lucy had almost forgotten the Cybermen. She stares at them for a moment, holding her breath… but they make no movement.

The hand of the dead man continues to twitch.

Lucy glances back at his face and—to her total _horror_ —she sees his eyes moving, slowly, side to side.

“Oh god.” Lucy crawls forward again. “Oh god, are you alive?” she thinks it’s impossible, even as she says it. She reaches out a hand, but she can’t bear to touch him.

His eyes blink, horribly slowly. Blood splutters from the wound in his chest.

“Are you alive?” she hisses again, helplessly, her hand hovering over him. She wishes his eyes were closed. She wishes his eyes _would_ close. She feels how hot his blood is, trickling against her knees.

“I’m sorry.” She stammers. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, _god_ …”

His arm spasms again.

Lucy is shaking all over, but she can’t move. Her entire body seems to have stopped working. Blue eyes stuck wide, she stares at the man’s face. He blinks one more time. The hand twitches. Lucy reaches out to try and take hold of it.

“It’s dead.” A voice says coldly. “Leave it alone.”

At the unexpected sound, Lucy pulls her hand away. She lifts her head.

Harry is standing in the middle of the road, between the dead man and the dead Cybermen. He isn’t looking at her— his eyes are fixed on the sky.

“ _Harry_ …” Lucy gasps his name, full of relief. “Oh… oh thank god, I was so _scared_ …”

Clutching hold of the car’s wing mirror, she forces herself to stand up again, seizing on the excuse to move away from the butchered corpse at her feet. She takes a few steps closer towards Harry.

“I didn’t know where you’d gone…” She explains breathlessly as she steps around the man’s bleeding skull, refusing to look down as her stomach twists with guilt. “And then the TARDIS was… and there was such a noise…”

“Yes.” Harry still isn’t looking at her, but he seems to almost smile at her words: “The noise…”

Lucy stares at him. The tears she’s managed to suppress at the nearness of death are stinging her eyes again at his sudden reappearance, and all she wants is to bury her face in Harry’s shoulder and have him wrap his arms around her and tell her that it’s all nothing; that it’ll all be over soon. But he’s watching the sky without blinking and Lucy doesn’t think he’s even really noticed she’s there.

She takes another step closer. Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy can tell the dead man’s arm is still twitching; but she doesn’t let herself turn around.

“Did the… did the Cybermen… kill him?” She asks, her heart throbbing painful and cold in her chest.

“They’re running out of soldiers. “ Harry replies tonelessly, after a pause. “They were trying to convert him here, without a conversion unit; just the basics… the brain, the heart. Emergency troops… They weren’t expecting _Daleks_.”

Lucy can see the corner of his mouth twist, like he wants quite desperately to find this funny. But he doesn’t manage it.

“Daleks?”

Harry closes his eyes:

“Do you hear what they’re saying?” he murmurs, raising a finger to keep her silent. “Do you hear it? That one word… Just one word…”

Lucy presses her lips together, trying desperately not to cry:

“ _Harry_ …”

“No, shhh, _listen_ ;” He urges and finally does turn, fixing Lucy with dark, scathing eyes: “ _Listen_ to them…Do you hear it? Do you hear what they say?”

Trembling, Lucy listens, more terrified of the expression twisting Harry’s face than of any alien invasion. She listens; she listens, and she begins to make it out:

“ _Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!”_

“Over and over and over again…Do you hear how much they’re _enjoying_ themselves?”

“ _Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!”_

Lucy stares disbelievingly at him and Harry holds her gaze, still that brutal smile playing around his lips.

“Does it _scare_ you Lucy?” he asks: “Are you _scared_?”

“ _Stop_ _it_ Harry.” Lucy pleads through her teeth.

Harry laughs, and he looks back at the metal shapes swooping through the sky, the _Daleks_ , hand shielding his eyes from the summer sun.

Lucy can still hear firing in the distance; she can hear the wailing of sirens and the wailing of people all jumbled together. Every instinct in her body is screaming at her to hide, to duck under the cars, to break into someone’s house and cower under their table because the Daleks are too close now; too close, too low down— she can see where their blasts are hitting the ground. She can see buildings shattering under beams of heat and light. She can see the metal creatures hovering and beginning to land among the debris… Sunshine glints and glimmers over them as they sweep through the sky and scream and scream and _scream_ …

Lucy says, in voice that sounds nothing like her own: “They’re going to kill us all, aren’t they?”

Harry doesn’t move. In fact, the only sign that he hears her at all is the slight twitch of a tightening muscle in his jaw.

But before he can make any sort of reply, his attention—and Lucy’s— is drawn by a new voice, a new sentence rasped out in that horrible mechanical screech high above their heads:

“ _Breach active! It is the Doctor!! Exterminate him! Exterminate!”_

Harry stares upwards, instantly incredulous:

“What _?”_

Lucy raises her own hands to her eyes, squinting into the bright sky. The Daleks are still there; but as Lucy watches she sees a whole squadron of them swoop around in an urgent U-turn, flying back the way they came, back to Torchwood One.

“ _What?”_

Harry takes a few disbelieving steps after them, mouth hanging open. Lucy follows, ignoring the stinging pain in her feet.

Suddenly, she grasps hold of Harry’s arm:

“Look!”

She points at the ground beside their feet; at the two Cybermen lying sprawled across the road in front of them. But they’re not quite sprawled anymore.

As they watch, the two massive silver bodies seem to levitate, pulled a few feet off the ground as if caught on a great invisible fish-hook… for a second their steel fingertips scrape along the concrete… then, they’re jerked upwards into the sky to join the torrent of Daleks now hurtling back towards Canary Wharf. They’re not flying, Lucy realises breathlessly:

“They’re… being pulled back in!”

“The breach is active...” Slowly, Harry repeats the Dalek’s words. “He’s opened the breach… reversed the ghost shift…”

Lucy looks over at him, dragging her eyes away from the stream of metal aliens careering through the sky. Harry is glaring upwards, a blackly furious expression on his face.

“Isn’t that good?” Lucy shouts over the noise of Daleks screaming past above their heads. “They’re leaving! Isn’t that _good_?”

But Harry doesn’t even spare her a look. He just stares after the Daleks and the Cybermen being sucked backwards into the Torchwood Tower, his fingers curling tighter and tighter around the laser screwdriver in his other hand, as if wishing to snap it in half and pretend it’s something else altogether.

All around them, people begin appearing from their doorways; from their offices and homes and cars. Lucy can see them out of the corner of her eye and thinks _how stupid; get back inside_ —but the situation is so incredible that it _has_ to be seen: millions and millions of alien bodies, so threatening moments before, now dragged violently along by some huge unseen magnet, blocking out the sun, back into Torchwood One; back through the breach, whatever that is; back through to whatever chaotic universe they arrived from.

It takes less than five minutes, in the end; and the terrorised, wide-eyed population of London crowds into their streets and watches numbly until the last Cyberman disappears, taking with it all evidence of the massive unexplainable invasion force that has devastated their planet.

Then, for one endless moment, the whole world seems frozen.

As the sky clears, Lucy squints upwards towards Canary Wharf. Miraculously—unbelievably— the building is still standing, its mirrored windows reflecting the happily oblivious sunshine. There’s a slight dent near the top floor where the invading aliens were dragged back through the glass; but only the faintest curls of black smoke reach it from the carnage in the streets below.

Behind her, Lucy hears someone start to clap; but it dies quickly in the heavy, cloying silence. Sirens and car alarms still reverberate through the air— but no-one speaks and no-one moves to shut them off. The screaming of the Daleks still seems to echo around the crumpled, shattered rooftops of the city.

It should feel triumphant, Lucy thinks, and her stomach clenches as she thinks it. It should feel triumphant. We win. We _win._

Suddenly, just behind her, at her feet, there is a strangled wail of pain and a series of horrible, wrenching sobs. It echoes obscenely in the prickling quietness. Lucy feels a sickening rush of guilt as she realises someone has recognised the dead, twitching, half-converted body collapsed across the road.

She doesn’t turn around. But, despite the heat, she begins to shiver. She screws up her eyes; rubs her hands up and down the goose-bumps on her arms— but it makes little difference.

Pressing her lips together, she looks across at Harry.

He’s shivering too; but not from fear, or shock. He’s laughing.

“Oh of course;” he says quietly, still watching the top level of Canary Wharf and the one broken window where all the aliens vanished.

“And that wonderful Doctor saves the day. Yet again.”

Lucy stares at him. He’s not talking to her; he’s tapping the fingers of his left hand compulsively against his leg. For all it looks like, he’s talking to the sky.

“And _this_ world survives. _This_ world…”

And he laughs, massively entertained, opening his arms to encompass the whole battered, blood-covered street:

“ _THIS_!?”

They stay there in the middle of that street for a long time. Painfully— limping— the world around them begins to move again; but the noises, the shapes on the edges of Lucy’s vision seem to fade in and out of focus like Christmas lights. Eventually she remembers that she probably has concussion.

At one point someone—perhaps a paramedic, although Lucy doesn’t notice—comes across and puts his hand on her shoulder in a comforting fashion; but her glare sends him scuttling away and she has to stop herself from screaming obscenities after him.

No-one is stupid enough to approach Harry. For the first time, distantly, as she shivers, Lucy remembers all those names he told her— _Prydon’s darkest design; the eternal devastation and conqueror of the everlasting fire; the last great King of Judah; Lord and Master of all things—_ and she doesn’t doubt a single one of them. In the middle of all the carnage, he looks like a Time Lord.

Amongst all of this, the shrill, urgent ringing of his phone seems laughably surreal. Like half-waking from a dream, it’s two minutes before Lucy realises the sound is anywhere else but inside her head; but when she does she glances across at Harry who, for a second, looks equally uncomprehending, even as he slides the pointless, bleeping little device out of his pocket. Then he notices the caller ID.

He looks at it for a long moment and Lucy sees his eyes narrow, calculating. Then— taking a deep breath— he flips the phone open and presses it to his ear.

Lucy closes her eyes. She can’t hear what he’s saying, and at the moment she doesn’t care. Her fingers are cold. There is an ambulance at the other end of the street flashing blue fluorescence rhythmically against her skin. Hazily, she thinks she would like to go back to the TARDIS now: it’s another world in there, and there are so many rooms she hasn’t visited yet. She could stay in there forever and no-one would find her. Right now that thought seems sorely tempting.

Eventually though, Lucy realises Harry has fallen silent again. Reluctantly, she looks across at him. With a slight furrowing of his eyebrows he clicks his phone shut; taps it thoughtfully against his teeth.

“Harry?” Lucy says hollowly; the first word she’s said in hours “What is it?”

Harry turns his head, but he doesn’t meet her gaze; for a long moment he doesn’t say anything and Lucy thinks maybe he didn’t even hear her. Then he takes the phone away from his mouth and Lucy can see his uneven grin glinting in the dying sunshine:

“…They’ve just made me Minister of Defense.”

 


	4. Day 364

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Christmas Star that... came to kill.

Lucy watches the great shining star sweep across the horizon. It seems to leave a chill behind it, as if a ghostly army is materialising in its wake. It is unhurried, leisurely. If Harry is seeing the same thing, Lucy imagines, he probably thinks it’s beautiful.

  
It is beautiful.

  
Lucy presses her palms against the cold window and her fingertips create little halos of condensation. In the street, crowds are beginning to gather. The cynical voice in Lucy’s head (which sounds a lot like her husband’s) berates them for their stupidity: At least inside you can hide for a little while. But she can’t deny that a larger part of herself wants to pull her coat on and go and get a better look and just pray that the killing doesn’t start until she’s safely back inside the TARDIS. 

  
But then, inevitably, it does. Great beams of white thundering down from the sky and the screaming blossoms like poppies and sounds just like it did when the Daleks attacked.

  
A beam hits the ground a few streets away: Lucy drops the curtain a little but doesn’t move from the window. She doesn’t see any point in screaming, or running— in fact, a tiny smile curls the corners of her mouth. Any moment now Harry will put an end to it and the Racnoss spaceship will burn just like the Sycorax spaceship did a year ago, only this time billions of innocent lives will be saved and Earth will proclaim righteous victory instead of staring dismayed at the unintentional blood on its hands.


End file.
